How do companies nurture their potential customers? Are they
doing it right, wrong, at all?
To answer these questions, we invented an employee, Freddie
Fox, and sent him out into the world to sign up with various companies to see
how they would treat him. In February 2021, Freddie registered with 21
different companies. But he did not respond to any communication from those
companies other than the double opt-in emails because we wanted to see how
these companies were treating him and how they were trying to keep his
interest. construction bolts
The companies were very diverse, with several in the field
of industrial technology with products such as motors and drives, a few
offering software development tools, and a few in the field of electronic
components. We also looked at the marketing mechanization area and requested
data from six different marketing automation companies. Three were enterprise
software companies, and a few other types of companies were added to the mix as
well.
There were also variations in the ways to subscribe to
companies: some just wanted an email address and you were on the list, while
others required a lot of information, such as the phone number and how to
contact you. I've heard of the company, your role, and your type. from work.
But Freddie only filled out one form per company, so who
didn't even follow up on Freddie's first contact? Five of the 21 did not
respond to Freddie: INVT, Softstart UK, Rotronic, Clever-touch and NetSuite.
Since Freddie is clearly not a real person, it was unclear
if any of these companies had called us; some may have tried to contact
Freddie, decided that he was not in the business establishment, and then
decided not to send emails.
However, we suspect that most of them just did not have an
emails follow-up process in place. In fact, these companies don't have lead
development, which clearly puts them on the back burner. So just by following
up, a business can be in the top 75% with just one emails.
One thing worth revealing is that Clevertouch, a marketing
technology company, did not follow up. While there may have remained some
issues with the form data uploaded to the company database, you hope this
doesn't happen.
When we looked at the number of follow-ups per company, six
sent a single email - the companies here were a mix, industrial automation,
electronic components, and some of the commercial companies. Then we start to
see more and more emails. Videojet sent two, and then there is a group of
companies that sent three. At the top is Adobe - here Freddie filled out a form
on the page for Marketo, an Adobe company, and from the two of us we
acknowledged an entire of 15 communications.
In the space of two calendar month, HubSpot sent 17 emails
and Dotdigital sent 11. The interesting thing is that Dotdigital, Adobe, and
HubSpot are all marketing automation companies. As such, they all have access
to a wealth of data that shows what works not just for them, but for their
clients as well. So it's very reasonable to assume that these businesses know
that tracking multiple emails is more efficient, which is why they send so
many.
On the contrary, the fact that many industrial companies
send very few emails probably does not contribute much to their performance, so
sending more would make a big difference.
Another motivating thing was that almost half of the
companies used more than one email address. Many used different corporate email
addresses, but many, especially the more sales-oriented businesses, had
individual emails. Looking at some of the campaigns, we feel that some of the
best ones use these multiple email addresses very effectively.
All emails were sent Monday through Friday, during extended
business hours, from around eight in the morning to around five in the morning,
with no real-time consistency.
Therefore, we cannot say that people who ran good campaigns
sent emails at a different time than people who ran campaigns that were not so
good.
